BEST OF 2025: K-12 Education
Educating and investing in future generations is one of society's most important roles. The Advance was there this year to report on how Fredericksburg-area localities shoulder this responsibility.
According to a September 2025 report by Bellwether—a national education-focused nonprofit—the national news media’s coverage of education focuses mainly on the U.S. Department of Education, or on political and cultural issues such as gun violence in schools; sex, gender, LGBTQ+, and Title IX issues in schools; and religion in schools.
“Political and cultural news appeared to crowd out coverage of academic outcomes and efforts to improve them,” the report states. Some of the least commonly covered subjects included curriculum and instruction, teachers, and academic outcomes. In other words, the daily work of public K-12 schools is often obscured by national news media in favor of issues that will elicit a strong and often negative reaction.
The Advance’s coverage and analysis of K-12 public schools this year centered instead on issues and decisions that directly affected students, teachers, and families in the Fredericksburg region—issues like funding, staffing, and how local school boards work together (or not). Some of our notable stories included an op-ed on Fredericksburg City Schools’s 15-year report card; a spat between a Stafford supervisor and School Board member over funding; Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s planned and aborted visit to James Monroe High School; Spotsylvania School Board members not attending two-on-two meetings with the superintendent; the $14 million gap between projected revenues and expenditures in Stafford County Public Schools’s budget; concerns about staffing at Fredericksburg’s Lafayette Elementary School; an op-ed about the transportation mess in Fredericksburg City this year; the announcement of Caroline County Public Schools’s inaugural Hall of Fame class; Spotsylvania School Board member Lisa Phelp’s request to see superintendent Clint Mitchell’s hiring documents; and editor-in-chief Martin Davis’s analysis of Mitchell’s response to that request.
Our choice for top K-12 education story of the year is a two-fer about the Fredericksburg City School Board that raised questions about travel and professional development expenses, and board norms and protocols.
First-Class Tickets, Canceled Cards, and Shuttle Service Led to Policy Change
By Adele Uphaus
Fredericksburg City Public Schools’ new travel policy for Board members grew out of budget-busting traveling expenses and concerns about transparency.
Read the full story
Board Member’s Son Has Salary Raised Following Text Messages Between Member, Superintendent
By Adele Uphaus
Jarvis Bailey says he followed established protocol for sharing concerns received by Board members.
Read the full story
Local Obituaries
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The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
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And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
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